


Over Books and Bullets

by KKGlinka



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-18
Updated: 2012-09-18
Packaged: 2017-11-24 01:08:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/628577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KKGlinka/pseuds/KKGlinka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Myka is forced to choose her "one" and HG gets to meet the Bering family in the midst of a siege.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Over Books and Bullets

Myka's parents don't really know what's going on or why their daughter is holding a gun and screaming at them to get in the back of the store. But, they do know what happened with the magic evil book and pen and how Myka and her partner saved Warren. They don't ask questions or make demands; they drop everything and hustle into the stock room. 

Jeannie glances over her shoulder and says, anxiously, "Tracy's upstairs." 

"Fuck," Myka answers succinctly, holstering her SIG Sauer as she jogs upstairs. 

She finds her sister touching up her make-up in the bathroom and wants to shake her for caring about something so frivolous when goons with guns are closing in on the store. "You need to get downstairs into the stock room." 

"Why?" Tracy drawls while carefully reapplying some eye shadow. "And why are you here, for that matter?" 

"Tracy, we don't have time for this. Look, see?" Myka draws a hand through the air, indicating her work clothes and holstered weapon. "Work clothes. I'm working and I need you downstairs in the stockroom so I can get everyone out of here." 

She doesn't add that there are probably shooters in the rear alley but it'll be easier to pick them off. The front of the store is nothing but a shooting gallery and the top floor has windows that any self-respecting sniper would use. She doesn't have time to explain about crazy priests or how her boss neglected to share crucial information, yet again. 

"Is it an emergency?" Tracy moves on to straightening her hair. 

"Yes!" 

"Really?" Tracy finally turns to look at her, her expression all facetious tolerance of her sister's excessive sobriety, not to mention her penchant for emotional outbursts. 

"So help me, if you don't start walking I'll twist your arm and march you down there." 

That's when Myka hears glass breaking and knows that Brother Adrian's lackeys have reached the store and it's too late for measured reason. She tries to grab at Tracy's shoulder but her sister has stepped further back into the bathroom, wide-eyed. 

"What was that?" 

"The crazy people I'm trying to protect you from. Get moving!" 

"Oh, hell no." Tracy shoves past her to slam the bathroom door. 

At which point, Myka sees red because her parents are down in the stock room and her stupid, oh so fashionable sister with her pretty face and perfect hair and whatever businessman she's dating could cost them their lives. She grips her pistol tightly and only imagines whipping it across her sister's temple and carrying her downstairs. She could do it. Something about her expression must register with Tracy because her mask of haughty indifference slips. 

"Myka?" She takes a half step back and it's as if she's finally noticing that her shy, nerdy sister has long since moved on from venting her frustration with a fake sword to using very real guns, that the annoying, gauche brat had turned into a very tall and strong woman while Tracy was busy curling her hair and nabbing a date. 

Myka feels a tic began at the corner of one eye. She doesn't have time for this. "I work at a top secret government warehouse that stores insanely dangerous artifacts - objects. Some are deadly weapons of mass destruction and those men breaking into this store, this home, have at least one of them. It's my job to protect the world but right now, I'm trying to protect mom and dad." 

For a moment, it looks like Tracy is going to laugh but then she hears gunfire and she's out the door ahead of Myka. But only for a second, because Myka easily out distances Tracy's high heels. She's down the stairs and has put a bullet in one man's head and another in to the right of second man's the left scapula before Tracy catches up. She hears the gasp behind her and turns to shove Tracy toward the stock room. 

To her credit, Tracy doesn't flinch at stepping over the bodies, nor does Myka hear her vomit, a common physiological response to violent death. When her sister hesitates at the door, waiting for her to join the rest of the family behind the thin barrier, Myka shakes her head. She hears the door slam, closed in understandable panic. 

Myka takes the time to roll the bodies for extra guns and ammunition clips before running low behind a bookcase when her peripheral vision catches movement. She takes measured breaths as bullets strike and pass through the comparatively flimsy wood and hopes that any impact will be less than fatal. So long as she can keep shooting, it won't matter. 

The room turns a sickly puce, the color of the sky before hail or a tornado and Myka can't brace herself before she's gagging in dry heaves. She doesn't drop her pistol when she keels over, but her grip is weak and she falls on her side. She's still shaking when the light fades, but she aims at the blurry forms running into the store anyway. One falls but she feels something slam into her thigh while she's changing the clip. She chambers the barrel, corrects her aim but she's too slow. The pain kicks in and she misses completely, firing twice more in compulsive shock. 

She wants to rip her leg off as the pain squeezes in, like a white hot vise clamped on her thigh. She'd been hurt on the job multiple times since beginning with the Warehouse, but never shot dead on. She's read about the pain, but it's almost impossible to explain how the heart races as she breaks into a sweat and grows light-headed in the first stages of shock. She clamps a hand over the wound both to staunch the blood and because some primitive part of her brain is convinced she can press through it, shove the injury away. It doesn't even feel like her leg anymore. 

A breathing exercise helps her lift the gun and she hears herself screaming something at the last gunman as he raises a revolver in her face. She's not afraid and that surprises her, but she is furious. She's going to shoot him no matter how many times he shoots her first. 

It's a bit of a letdown when she's blinded by green electricity and she falls back, rubbing her eyes but still clinging to her pistol. She hears the man fall and lighter booted feet on the wooden floor. Heels and she'd know that gait anyway. She focuses on keeping pressure on her wound and trying not to gasp her way into a panicked meltdown. 

"Myka?" Helena whispers, before taking over medical duty, yanking off a scarf, tying a knot into it and wrapping it over the gunshot. 

"Could have gotten here earlier," Myka mutters and she thinks she ought to be surprised by Helena's arrival but her memory dutifully supplies the grainy black and white image of her sitting in the background with Leena before Mrs. Frederick signed off the Farnsworth. Slowly but with determination, she began holstering her pistol. When she can't button it down, she feels Helena's hand gently brush hers aside and hears the snap. She also hears the stock room door open. 

"Is it over? Who are you?" 

"Myka!" 

Jeannie's down on her arthritic knees cradling her head and Myka tries to tell her it's all right and not to make such a fuss. She opens her eyes to see her father watching from a distance. He has a hand over his mouth and his eyes are suspiciously bright but he attempts to compose himself when he catches her eyes. 

Helena shifts into a more comfortable position as she maintains pressure and, despite the circumstances, smiles cheerfully and oozes charm even though she must be able to hear the sirens in the distance. "It is, except for the part with the authorities. I'm Helena, a colleague of your daughter's." 

"Ooh, a British colleague," says Tracy. 

Myka almost laughs as her mother turns to glare. 

"English," Helena corrects politely. 

"Snob," Myka says. 

"I can let go," Helena challenges back, but doesn't let up pressure, taking any true threat out of it. 

Myka sighs and resolves to ignore her. She reaches up to grasp her mothers hand in a reassuring squeeze. "It's all right mom. I'm trained to handle this sort of thing and I'm pretty sure it went right through." 

"But you're bleeding!" 

"It's not spurting," she begins, cutting herself off when she sees her mother's face go white and Tracy look vaguely queasy. Well, it's not, she thinks to herself starting to feel grumpy. Do they really expect her to be tactful when her head is swimming with pain? She sees Helena suppressing a grin. 

"What she means to say is that the wound is non-fatal and relatively harmless, though quite painful. I should know." Though she looks up to speak to her family, Helena ends by meeting Myka's eyes. She's abruptly aware that her right hand is curled against Helena's thigh and she has no desire to move it. Well, no, that's not true as she realizes her eyes have strayed from her hand to the curve of Helena's jeans. 

She appreciates the tacit understanding but she also notices the suspicion growing on Tracy's face. She tries to ignore the fission of panic and she's not sure where that's coming from. It's probably just shock screwing with her perceptions. 

But Tracy could never take a hint. "So, you guys work together?" 

"Occasionally." 

"At, um, uh." Tracy purses her lips, searching for an alternative word. "At, y'know." 

Helena is too well practiced to gasp, but Myka feels her hand twitch, triggering a spike of pain that makes her hiss. Instead, she pauses, before saying, "Yes," and looking back at Myka in question. 

"No time. Had to get her downstairs." 

"Ah. You do realize-" 

"Yeah." 

Tracy gives a nervous laugh, more of a choked sound, as she looks between the two of them. "You're not going to have to kill me, or something, are you?" 

"No." 

"Oh." Tracy brushes at her hair. "That's good. I thought I might need to ditch the heels." 

Helena smoothly switches gears, turning that damned smile on Tracy of all people. "It wouldn't do you any good," she warns, in that tone of voice that doesn't promise violence. 

If she weren't in agony, Myka would laugh at how Tracy blushes and she can't see her mother's expression but she does catch her father making eye contact with his wife. Once Tracy finishes being surprised and embarrassed, she glares at Myka. 

It's probably the chaos and violence, the all around heightened emotion and sheer unreality of the situation that makes Tracy blurt, "Wait. Are you gay?" 

"No." 

Helena raises her eyebrows. "I know times have changed, but isn't that question considered presumptuous and bordering on rude?" 

"Yes." 

"Wow," interrupts Tracy, making a face at Helena. "That must suck for you." 

"Oh, not at all. I enjoy a challenge and I usually succeed." 

The sheer arrogance of the statement causes Jeannie to stare at Helena who has the grace to look slightly abashed by the silent reprimand. "This is my daughter you're talking about, Helena Whoever." 

Warren has his arms crossed but he's obviously going to let his wife handle this one. 

"Ah." Helena swallows and ducks her head, wiping the smarmy grin off her face. "Wells," she supplies before adding, "I would shake your hand, but as you can see...." 

Myka's father snorts. "Helena Wells?" 

"Yes." 

Myka sees him rolls his eyes briefly, ever the literature aficionado and with a sinking sensation, she knows the joke before he quips, "All it's missing is the 'G' and mystery solved." 

She silently pleads, shaking her head but Helena's beside herself, biting her lip before she grins and says to him, "As it so happens, that is my middle initial." 

She's saved from any further interrogation but the EMT who shoos them away. Myka starts to argue with the medical personnel, explaining that she needs to stay on site until her superiors arrive, but she spots the Eye of Horus on her tech's collar. She lets them give her morphine and doesn't need to look to know Helena's made her escape. She attributes her relief to the medication and murkily wonders if she's straight or gay or whatever and if it matters.


End file.
